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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 327562" data-attributes="member: 23">I rectified this last night with... The Love Bug (1969) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvignette.wikia.nocookie.net%2Fdisney%2Fimages%2F5%2F5e%2FThe_Love_Bug_Poster_4.jpg%2Frevision%2Flatest%3Fcb%3D20140211142704&f=1&nofb=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> ^ They've misspelt their own lead actress's name. The sacrilege!It's many years since I've watched any of the Herbie films (I think I've seen them all at some point, but I could be mistaken). I know I've seen The Love Bug a couple of times, though it's probably well over three decades since my last viewing. I was curious how it would hold up.I won't lie - it took a while for me to warm to the film. The opening credits with stock car pile up after stock car pile up seemed to go on forever and felt altogether too sporty to appeal to me (I've never been a fan of watching motor racing). There was also an interruption an hour into the film - we had one of our semi-regular power cuts and while power was resumed quickly,  the broadband in the area was out for an hour or so before being restored. That interrupted the flow a bit.It struck me that this had more than a touch of the Wacky Races to it. With Tomlinson's Peter Thorndyke as Dick Dastardly, naturally. Upon looking, the cartoon had begun just the previous year and was itself based on an earlier film The Great Race. I don't know if there is any connection, since I seem to remember that films featuring various vehicle races were very much in vogue at this time.I had wondered how the Beetle was chosen as the main car. Minis and Fiat 500s are cuter, after all. But then the Mini itself was immortalised on film this very same year with The Italian Job. And I suppose both the Mini and the Fiat 500 were just too darned small to easily fit three adults and film them. All the same, it's ironic that that Disney, with its wholesome, all-American image should adopt the brainchild of one Adolf Hitler as the adorable star of its film. Apparently, VW didn't want the marketing anyway and refused the use of their logo (barring a couple of glimpses on pedals and a key). While Herbie is never referred to as a "Volkswagen" or a "Beetle" within the film, VW hadn't trademarked the informal nickname "Bug" at the time, hence the name.The film did win me over, just as Herbie did Jim. There's a charm to the obvious fakery, such as the very dated rear projection used to show characters driving round San Francisco (Alcatraz even makes a cameo at one point).My favourite aspect of the whole film was the way the gorgeous matte backdrops were combined with real life. The set for Jim's house-cum-workshop was very atmospheric indeed and I couldn't get enough of it. It looked great by day and night. At one point (leading up to Herbie's suicide attempt) there's a gorgeous matte of the Golden Gate Bridge, complete with flashing lights atop. And there were smoky effects to bring the matting to life, with characters disappearing into the haze like ghosts. It all felt quite magical.Casting was fine. I'm sure I've seen Dean Jones in other things (he has a couple of Murder, She Wrotes to his credit among other things) but he's not an actor I'd look at and know his name. He was solid enough here. Weirdly, I kept seeing a younger Don Murray, but I don't know if that was influenced by Michele Lee. Michele is as charming as ever here, and probably very in-demand at this time with this film being post-How To Succeed and pre-Seesaw.On paper, I really shouldn't like Buddy Hackett doing his loveable sidekick thing with all the gurning, but actually I found him quite endearing and found I couldn't take my eyes off him if he was in a shot with other actors. David Tomlinson was great, playing his usual Disney role of the wily, underhanded, entitled, snobby businessman. Again, it's been seen before, but he does it so well his was the performance I enjoyed most as the man I loved to hate.George Bruns's music is as lovely as ever. He did one of my favourite Disney scores: Sleeping Beauty (albeit with some help from one Pyotr Tchaikovsky). He gives Herbie a really nice, appropriately cheeky-sounding theme, with rasping sounds that evoke the famous tippetty-tap sound of the Beetle's engine. And the South American flavour accidentally foreshadowed the main assembly point for the Beetle for the last twenty five years or so of its life.</blockquote>

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